People are drawn to different types of games for specific reasons. Some people like strategy games because they like to challenge their mental capacities. Some people like really challenging games, that they’ll lose more often than they win, because they like the challenge to their skill. Others like simple pick-up-and-play games because they don’t have a whole lot of time but still like playing games.

One of the main things that I look for in games is an aspect of replayability. Whether a tabletop game or a video game, can I play this game more then once (preferably, multiple times) and have a noticeably different experience each time? Often, this is seen in having branching story paths or having enough choices so that I don’t have to make the same moves all the time.

Part of this comes down to the frugality of investment. If I’m spending this much money on a game, I want to get my money’s worth. I don’t want to waste the limited resources that I have.

However, the bulk of looking for replayability is found in appreciating the whole. When you have choices and options, there are some that you don’t take. You can’t take them all, otherwise there wouldn’t be a choice. Thus, you can appreciate the parts that you didn’t get revealed to you previously on later playthroughs.

Whether it’s a choice of a different class, or a different win option, or a different moral choice, you get a distinctly separate viewpoint each time. Playing a martial combatant is very dissimilar to playing a skillful manipulator. And both are very unlike a caster.

There is one distinct game, with one specific intention of use, but the perspective one takes, creates a direction of thought that one wouldn’t follow given a different perspective on the same single object. The game is still the same, but the end result looks different based off of the choices made while interacting with it.

I believe that the same thing happens when we look at the truth contained in the bible. There is one distinct truth. It doesn’t change. But like a well cut diamond there are many facets, each with their own unique beauty. And one’s ability to appreciate the beauty of the particular facet is to focus perspective on that specific facet.

When I talk about some theological topic, I can’t cover everything. Not only is there not room in a blog or a sermon to wax eloquently upon every facet of the truth, I don’t even have enough time in my limited life to experience every perspective. I can’t witness the full beauty of the truth because of my limited self.

And as I grow in my relationship in Jesus, even facets that I had seen before gain even greater beauty because of new depths of understanding.

There’s this grand beauty in the truth of God that requires us to take a new look from time to time. We might see something that we missed the first time. Or we might have a brand new facet to look at because the events of our lives have forced us into a new perspective.

The truth remains as it was to begin with, but changes within us help us see the truth anew.

I’ll be honest. (This blog is meant to create that space.) As we near the anniversary of the first blog post here on Brushstrokes of a Theonerd, I began to worry that I was running out of topics to write about. But the fact that God calls his people over and over again to remember the truth that he has already taught them popped back into my head.

He calls us to remember, in part, because we are a forgetful people. But, I feel that its more so because we are a finite people, a people of limitations. If we don’t look back at what we’ve already learned, there will be so much that we will have missed.

Looking back at topics and ideas that we’ve already covered isn’t redundant, or excessive, or unnecessary. It gives us the gift of relearnability. That new perspective. That new direction. That new understanding. It’s the same truth, but our changes help us see it in a new way.

So, as future blogs come, I might talk about subjects or ideas that we’ve already looked at. But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing new for us. I have changed since the last time I wrote about it. And you have changed since then too. Who knows what new beauty we can discover together, that’s been there all along.